Located near the intersection of the western and southwestern neighborhoods of the city of Little Rock, Boyle Park is an approximately 250-acre tract of largely-unimproved woodland donated to the city by Dr. John F. Boyle in 1929. The warranty deed authorizing the transfer of title to the land explicitly stipulated that the park be used for “recreational purposes” only and that should this property ever cease to be used as such the title would revert back to the family and its heirs. At the time of its donation it was only the third public park in the city of Little Rock (the others being MacArthur Park and Allsopp Park).
The park remained largely unimproved until the mid-1930s, when the Civilian Conservation Corps boys arrived (though there seems to be some uncertainty about exactly when the actual construction work began, two different contemporaneous sources reveal that as of the spring of 1935 work had not yet begun, but that by the spring of 1937 work was complete and the unit involved in finishing the work within the park — the 3777th company, originally from West Fork, where they were supposed to be involved in the ongoing construction at Devil’s Den State Park — were wondering where they would be shipped next).
The CCC boys camped at Fair Park (approximately one mile to the northeast) and worked on such improvements to Boyle Park as walls, signage, rest room facilities and a concession building in addition to the resources that survive. Boyle Park forms an historic district that is significant by virtue of its associations with the men that built it, the enrollees of the Civilian Conservation Corps Company 3777, and by virtue of their being outstanding and remarkably intact examples of the Rustic architectural style.
Boyle Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 22, 1995.